


stitch me up

by kathillards



Category: Kamen Rider Ex-Aid
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Minor Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-10 00:58:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11680683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathillards/pseuds/kathillards
Summary: Three times Hiiro patched Emu up, and one time Emu did.





	stitch me up

There are quite a lot of things about Emu Hojo, genius gamer and surgical intern, that Hiiro would start listing off if one asked him “What are the most annoying qualities of Emu Hojo?” but none rank quite as high as his _clumsiness._

Hiiro has no idea how someone this shaky on his own two feet became a doctor in the first place, let alone a rider for CR, but he did, and now he has to clean up Emu’s messes, wherever they may be.

Today, it happens to be a cut on the top of his nose, probably from banging into something he shouldn’t have. Emu keeps sniffling and pressing a tissue to the bridge of his nose, as if that will help.

“Don’t you have a bandage?” Hiiro asks, narrowing his eyes at Emu as he strides into the CR office.

“I ran out of bandages,” Emu says sheepishly. “It’s fine. It’ll stop bleeding soon.” As if to prove it, he pulls the tissue away, only to find it soaked in blood.

“Right,” Hiiro says sarcastically. “Had it not occurred to you that we have bandages in CR?”

“I – ” Emu begins to say, then stops when he notices Hiiro walking across the room to pull out said bandages from a cabinet. “I can do it myself.”

“Clearly,” Hiiro agrees. “Move your hand. With your luck, you’ll just make it worse.”

Emu looks affronted for a minute, but he does move his hand and the tissue off his nose. Hiiro carefully wipes away the blood with a clean tissue, then opens the bandage, pressing it down onto the bridge of Emu’s nose.

“Ow,” Emu mutters. He’s perhaps a bit harder with the bandage than he should have been. Still, the job is complete, and he steps back to survey his handiwork. “Thanks.”

“Stop running around and focus on your job,” Hiiro says instead of ‘you’re welcome’, and for some reason, Emu seems to take this as a compliment, because he flashes a smile at Hiiro. In such close quarters, the brightness and openness of his face is unnerving; Hiiro turns away quickly.

.

He tries not to make a habit of patching Emu up – as a doctor, the intern should know how to do it himself, and, for the most part, Emu does manage on his own. But sometimes, he’ll walk into CR and clearly be hiding a wound or injury and Hiiro obviously has to deal with it, because they need Emu, for some godforsaken reason, to be alive and well for their fights.

“What did you do this time?” he asks warily, eyeing Emu as he limps into CR, rubbing his leg with one hand.

“Just a bruise,” Emu says with that trademark bright smile. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Let me see,” Hiiro commands, getting out of his chair and leaving his cake half-finished.

Emu, to his surprise, shies away. “It’s fine, Hiiro,” he insists, taking a seat on the couch near the back rather heavily. “I’ll be okay.”

Hiiro grabs an ice pack out of the freezer and pulls a chair up to Emu. “We don’t need you to be _okay_ , we need you to be in top shape for the next Bugster attack. How’s it going to look if Ex-Aid is limping around on the battlefield?”

Emu’s mouth falls open, like he’s going to say something but is too surprised to come up with a proper retort. While he struggles with that, Hiiro takes his bad leg and hoists it up onto his lap, rolling up his jeans before Emu can protest. There’s a visibly purple bruise on his skin, just below his knee.

“Hey,” Emu murmurs, and then hisses as Hiiro presses two fingers onto the bruise to test his reaction.

“Nothing to worry about?” Hiiro asks, raising his eyebrows at Emu, who looks away. “Keep this here,” he adds and props the ice pack on top of the bruise. “I don’t want you moving for at least half an hour. Being a Rider gives you better recovery from injuries, but it’s not a perfect resource and you can’t rely on the suit to fix everything for you.”

“I wasn’t,” Emu says, but his eyes are bright when he looks up at Hiiro. He hadn’t meant to move his chair closer, but he finds he can suddenly see every speck in Emu’s eyes, the way they crinkle with his smile, the pink of his lips –

Hiiro gets up before he can start cataloguing the hair falling into Emu’s eyes and carefully places Emu’s leg on his now-vacated seat before turning away. “I’ll be in the hospital if anyone needs me,” he says gruffly, and disappears through the door before he can hear anything Emu says in response.

.

It’s not like he’s paying attention, but it’s hard not to notice the way Emu keeps pressing his hand to his chest all through the CR meeting where neither of them are paying attention to his father or to Poppy. If he really concentrates, he can see the trickle of blood beneath his pink shirt – and it doesn’t take a genius to see Emu wincing every time someone speaks loudly near him.

“Can you excuse us?” he asks his father when Poppy is done, looking at both of them significantly until they leave. Emu looks slightly startled when they’re the only two people left in the room.

Hiiro turns to him and crosses his arms. “You got hurt in that battle, didn’t you?”

“Just a bit,” Emu says with a laugh that seems forced. “Don’t worry about it. I know where to find the bandages – ”

“Don’t be stupid,” Hiiro says crossly and walks around the table to the cabinets to pull out the gauze and bandages. “Let me see.”

“Um.” Emu hesitates, keeping one hand to the wound beneath his shirt. “That’s okay. I’ll handle it myself.”

“I’m a trained doctor and you’re an intern,” Hiiro says, rolling his eyes. “Which one of us is more qualified to handle it?”

Emu still shrinks away when Hiiro approaches him. “It’s just… I don’t need you to worry about me. Like when I had the game disease and you…” He trails off, turning his head away.

Hiiro freezes where he stands, acutely uncomfortable all of a sudden. He hadn’t thought – of course he hadn’t thought, how much it would mess with Emu, seeing his allies, seeing _Hiiro_ attacking him like that, with no just cause. Or at least, none that made sense to him. And to know that he had been attacking out of misplaced concern…

Hiiro takes a breath and steps closer. “Intern,” he says roughly, making Emu’s gaze dart back to him. “I… apologize. For that.”

Any other words get stuck in his throat. Emu just stares at him, looking halfway between confused and thoughtful. Hiiro sighs and offers him the bandages.

“I understand,” he adds, a little awkwardly, “if you don’t want me to treat you. But I… I can do it. If you want.”

Emu looks from him to the proffered bandages then back to him. “Hiiro…”

“Just take them,” Hiiro mutters. The sooner this apology was over, the better.

Emu shakes his head, though, and then pulls his hand away to shrug off his lab coat. “You can probably handle it better than me,” he says with a small grin tilting his lips. Hiiro blinks at him, unable to look away as Emu tugs his shirt off from the neck and sits down on a chair in front of him.

“Oh,” he says slowly. “Right. I mean… you’re right.”

Carefully, he sits down in the chair opposite Emu and tries not to look at his encouraging smile as he cleans the blood from his chest. The wound starts at his collarbone, and although it’s not very deep, it does go further down to his stomach. Hiiro has to focus hard on the red of the blood and not the soft skin of Emu’s bare chest beneath it.

There’s beeping from behind him, and he realizes belatedly that Poppy is in her game and can probably see all of this happening if she were inclined to watch. Hopefully she’s not. He tries not to think about it as he wraps the bandages around Emu’s shoulder and chest.

“Thanks, Hiiro,” Emu says softly when he’s almost done. “I appreciate it, really.”

Hiiro coughs as he pulls back and looks away. “Just try not to get yourself injured like that again.”

He pretends not to notice the way Emu’s smile brightens, like he’s said something nice.

.

“Hiiro!” Emu’s voice startles him out of his thoughts, sharp and worried. “You’re bleeding!”

Hiiro blinks at him, then remembers the blood trickling down from his forehead. He’d come into CR meaning to clean up the wound, and gotten distracted with the chart of Bugsters and Gashatrophies and wondering just what it really meant to end Kamen Rider Chronicle. It’s late at night, so Poppy was asleep, as was everyone else who lived here, and he has no idea why Emu is even in this late.

All that goes through his head, and what he says is, “I’m fine.”

Emu looks at him in mild exasperation. “You sound like me,” he says, moving closer. “What happened?”

“Last battle,” Hiiro admits, running his fingers just under the wound. “I bandaged it up earlier and it was fine but I guess it opened again in the middle of the night.”

“Let me,” Emu says earnestly, going to get a cloth and the gauze from the cabinet.

“Are you sure?” Hiiro asks doubtfully, but he makes no move to stop him. Intern or not, Emu has come far.

“I think I can handle it,” Emu says with a laugh. “You’ve taught me well, haven’t you?”

Hiiro feels his lips twitch and quickly clamps down on the smile. “We’ll see,” he says noncommittally, and tries not to let his breath hitch when Emu gently presses the cloth to his forehead to wipe away the blood.

“Are you okay?” Emu asks in concern, his other hand coming up to rest lightly on Hiiro’s cheek, to keep him steady. “I’m not hurting you, am I?”

“Please,” Hiiro scoffs. “Like you could.”

Emu’s smile resurfaces, brighter this time, and his face is incredibly close now as he carefully presses the gauze bandage to the wound and seals it down. “Is that good?”

“Yeah,” Hiiro says, but his voice comes out strangely shaky. “Yeah, that’s – that’s fine.”

Emu beams at him, and doesn’t move his hand from his cheek, like he’s forgotten it’s there. Hiiro would say thank you, or anything normal, but instead what happens is that his face tilts forward of its own accord and then his lips are on Emu’s in a kiss he certainly hadn’t planned for.

“Oh,” Emu breathes, caught off guard. Hiiro nearly jerks himself back, but Emu’s hand stops him, keeps him anchored, as he leans in and kisses Hiiro back. His mouth is unbearably soft, no cuts or bruises anywhere near his lips, for once, and he tastes sweet in a different way from Hiiro’s cakes, a better way.

A way that makes him want to keep kissing him.

Hiiro slides one hand up Emu’s chest, lingering over his heart, and then up and around to tangle in his hair, angling his head for a deeper kiss. Emu goes willingly, opens his mouth, kisses him soft and slow and warm.

He’s entirely different from Saki. Worlds away. Not better or worse, just… Hiiro thinks he would like to keep doing this, for as long as Emu will let him.

It takes a few moments of kissing for his brain to remember where he is, and who he is. He breaks the kiss and stares, eyes wide, into Emu’s face, the first inklings of mortification creeping up inside him.

Emu’s eyelashes are fluttering, his breathing heavy and his eyes blown wide. Hiiro’s gaze tracks the flush on Emu’s cheeks down his neck, disappearing into his blue t-shirt, completely involuntarily, and something in his stomach does a somersault.

“Emu,” he breathes, and doesn’t realize for a moment that he’s used Emu’s real name and not ‘intern’. “I – I don’t know what – ”

“It’s okay,” Emu assures him, fingers sliding down and off his cheek. Hiiro feels the lack of their warmth almost immediately. “It’s all right. We don’t have to – I’ll go.”

“No,” he says quickly, too quickly, and catches Emu’s wrist in his hand. “I mean – don’t go.” The thought of being alone in CR, with his aching forehead and without Emu, seems unthinkable just now. “I just…”

He doesn’t have an explanation. Emu seems to realize this, because he smiles and leans up to kiss him again. This time, Emu brings both hands up to cup his face, holds him steady as he relaxes into the kiss. He’s warm, and solid, and his body presses up against Hiiro’s in all the right ways, like a puzzle piece, or something slightly less cliché.

Hiiro pulls apart just to inhale slowly, his heart racing. He searches Emu’s face for some hint, any hint that he should stop doing this, that it’s a bad idea, but all he finds is Emu’s smile, steady and sweet, and his head leans into the touch of Emu’s hands without him even thinking about it.

“You okay?” Emu asks gently, sliding one hand up to brush over the bandage on his forehead, smoothing his hair out of the way.

Hiiro swallows. “Yeah,” he says, and finds himself surprised that he actually means it, even though his heart is still pounding a thousand miles a minute. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

He kisses Emu again, and this time, he doesn’t find himself inclined to stop, not even a little bit.


End file.
